A beautiful day in the neighborhood

Best known for his nonfiction work (including Cod and Salt), writer Mark Kurlansky tries his hand at fiction in this debut novel, a tale that teems with life from the first page. Boogaloo on 2nd Avenue: A Novel of Pastry, Guilt, and Music brings readers to New York's Lower East Side in 1988, when gentrification of this multiethnic neighborhood was just beginning. Kurlansky plops the reader...